They are about to turn on the super-particle collider, CERN - quest for the god atom?

amy31416 said:
The basic idea is that a bunch of over-educated folks in Europe are getting together to make a very tiny amount of matter go really, really fast and run it into a wall so it will break apart and they can look at the rubble. From this rubble, they hope to find out what makes that tiny amount of matter tick.
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That works. I was about to ask Roxi if she knew what was inside a baseball, then say that it's like shooting a baseball out of a potato cannon at a chain link fence. A few sensors on the other side of the fence and you know what's inside a baseball.
 
hypnagogue said:
Actually, my recollection was that if certain theories were correct, then black holes are to be expected. They suggest though that they will either dissipate or be so microscopic as to be harmless. Here's an article to that effect.
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Well that's tremendously less exciting! Thanks for the article.
 
torchbearer said:
Are they linked into Boinc?
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php

I've been helping researchers from all different projects use my computer when i'm not on it.
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For those interested, Boinc has clients for all OSesL http://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php

I started with them back when berkeley took over the SETI project with SETI@home
Since then, i've participated in 12 different science projects.
My Faves
SETI@home
World Community Grid (medical research)
Einstien@home
 
torchbearer said:
anyone have a clue when the first photon will get smashed?
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http://lhc-milestones.web.cern.ch/lhc-milestones/year2008-en.html

This is the latest:

The adventure begins soon.

Scheduled to start in 2008, the LHC is making the final preparations before embarking on a new era of discovery at the high energy frontier.

LHC experiments will address questions such as what gives matter its mass, what the invisible 96% of the Universe is made of, why nature prefers matter to antimatter and how matter evolved from the first instants of the Universe’s existence.
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No specifics, alas.
 
amy31416 said:
http://lhc-milestones.web.cern.ch/lhc-milestones/year2008-en.html

This is the latest:



No specifics, alas.
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Well, we know they are in the cooling process, and all the magnets should be a go.
It should be soon.

I'm thinking, perhaps, that we can have an End of the World moneybomb for the campaign for liberty or something.
Black Hole would be the theme of that ball.
:D

Seriously, I'd like to know, just in case...
In Louisiana, we hold hurricane parties in a sadistic sense to celebrate what little time we have left. I'm thinking a possible end of the world party should commence before each experiment. It could be fun.
Raise money for your favorite charity.. etc...
 
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large_hadron_collider.png
 
I did some work with helium a few years ago. I helped install and start a few helium liquifiers.One was in Waxahachie (supercollider) some in Georgia at Kayolan clay and managed one in Keyes Ok.

The temperature are taken using a "bulb" A small piece of tubing is filled with helium,hydrogen,etc. It is insereted in the pipe were you get your temp. As the gas cools(in the pipe) the gas in the tubing will start to get lower(collapse). Tubing is hooked to a pressure guage. Lets say at ambient temp the guage shows 100 psig, as temperatures get colder the gas will start lowering the pressure in the guage.the engineers figure out what temps equal certian temps. I;m not an engineer.

The main use for helium at the Texas super collider was to save power.If the electrical cables are submerged in Liquid helium the resistance goes way down.

The helium use in Georgia was for a large magnet.(save power) A slurry of the dirt and water was mixed and sent through the magnet to remove any metal particles. Kayopectay (not sure of spelling) is made from clay, so if you ever have the shits take some clay.

MRI units also need helium to operate. The plant I ran was there to liquify helium. The reason for this is that you can transport a lot more in the liquid form. When it reached the customer it is sent through a vaporizer to put it back in gas form.

I have been in this business (air seperation plants,etc for 20 years.Presently I operate a plant with makes H2 (pipeline 260mmscfd) and ccarbon monoxide, and syngas.

I hope this was helpful, and dont forget I am not a college graduate.
 
torchbearer said:
i'm really interested in this project.
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I hope they don't find what they are looking for. I hope instead that it produces a reaction no scientist anticipated, and they all freak out, and have to re-write every physics book on the planet.

It's always the accidental discoveries that are the greatest.
 
aravoth said:
I hope they don't find what they are looking for. I hope instead that it produces a reaction no scientist anticipated, and they all freak out, and have to re-write every physics book on the planet.

It's always the accidental discoveries that are the greatest.
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I'm hoping for some insanity to shake things up too. Who doesn't need to reconsider how they've thought about everything?
 
amy31416 said:
I'm hoping for some insanity to shake things up too. Who doesn't need to reconsider how they've thought about everything?
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That is how we got to where we are today, we shouldn't be so arrogant as to think we have it all figured out.
Not all the pieces fit together, that is why we have quantum physics... and not just Physics.
 
Nerd-rap

It's actually decent, information-wise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

News Bytes of the Week: Large Hadron Collider gets its own rap song
Hot and spicy salmonella; Promising Alzheimer's drug; EPA studies nanotech safety; White Knight Two debuts; and more...

By Adam Hadhazy, JR Minkel, Nikhil Swaminathan and Larry Greenemeier

THE LHC RAP: Who knew the Large Hadron Collider, pictured here, would get its own rap tune?


You know a science experiment has arrived when a rap song extolling its virtues just hit YouTube. After 14 years, CERN, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, is getting ready to switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), designed to seek out new particles including the long-awaited Higgs boson and the possible source of dark matter as well as study the differences between matter and antimatter. The lab says it plans to send the first particles through the LHC's 17-mile- (27-kilometer-) diameter ring in early September and gradually bring it up to full speed over two months. In honor of the impending start-up, Alpinekat, aka Kate McAlpine, a science writer for CERN, has produced a five-minute rap video starring herself and friends dancing in the bowels of the machine. McAlpine's rap, written during her 40-minute bus commute from Geneva to CERN, gives a rhythmic tour of the mysteries of modern physics and the workings of the LHC, noting that "the things that it discovers will rock you in the head." It even has a good hook.
 
Their is a Theory of Everything that Einstein so sought, Did he go to his grave with it?
 
bucfish said:
Their is a Theory of Everything that Einstein so sought, Did he go to his grave with it?
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Most likely it doesn't exist. I think the Incompleteness Theorem, and the Uncertainty Principle allude that either humans will never understand everything, or we have been working in the wrong direction for the last 2500 years.
 
bucfish said:
Their is a Theory of Everything that Einstein so sought, Did he go to his grave with it?
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There is no Theory of Everything yet, Einstein wasn't even close to coming up with something. So no, he didn't go to his grave with it.

Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are pretty hard to make it work in synch, only one of the reasons we know we have a long way to go.
 
amy31416 said:
Impossible in space also so far as we know.

It's kinda nifty how we have all these concepts and a "perfect" state is never attainable in almost anything.
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Including political states as stated by my byline:D
Great thread by the way.
 
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